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Saturday, 4 April 2015

Making an album, part 6: Vengeance (in E minor) will be mine

Have
you ever been let down by a friend or a lover? Ever been betrayed or dumped for
a younger, richer or more glamorous model? At some point in our lives, most of us
will get ditched or double-crossed, pulverised or put down and the chances are
that some of us will harbour dark thoughts of revenge. Harbouring
those thoughts can be a frustrating way to pass the time, but if you’re a songwriter
you can at least even things up a little by writing a revenge song. Your revenge
song won’t quite make up for any slights you have suffered, but the process of
writing it will be cathartic and, if you get lucky, it might even make you a
few bob.

Well-known
examples of revenge songs include Carly Simon’s ‘You’re so vain’ (which I think
was probably about me), and ‘How do you sleep?’ which was John Lennon’s
not-so-sneaky attempt at the character assassination of a fellow Beatle (nice
work, John). ‘Goodbye Earl’ by The Dixie Chicks was an otherwise jolly
country-pop hit which gleefully advocated the murder of a domestic abuser,
while Elvis Costello launched a lucrative career on the back of a whole bunch of
songs heavily seasoned with vengeful bitterness.

Revenge
songs, by their very nature, can get a bit ugly. Alanis
Morrissette’s smash hit ‘You oughta know’ is a fine piece of music, but one
can’t help but suspect that it represents six months of counselling distilled
into four raging minutes of bombast. Addressing an unfaithful former lover, the
lyric asks:

“Every
time I scratch my nails down someone else's back
I hope you feel it ... well, can you feel it?”

The
answer is ‘probably not, Alanis’, but you do get the impression that she had to
either write that song or go ahead and boil the ex-boyfriend’s bunny.

In
song-writing, as in life, I’m generally the sort of person who prefers to poke
gentle fun rather than put the boot in, but the song I’ve linked to below (Angry Boy) does stray somewhat into revenge song territory. It was inspired by
an awkward social encounter from about a year ago, when I was out having a few
drinks in mixed company. During what I thought was a civilised and interesting
discussion on the topic of Scottish independence, I was threatened by a
middle-aged chap (who happened to be a member of the local arts community).
When I say ‘threatened’ I mean that he actually wanted to hit me. From where I
had been standing, I thought we were having a good old intellectual joust as he
laid out the case for independence and I –from what was at the time an
undecided position- batted back a few questions and concerns. Because I’m used
to the company of people who like to discuss things without hitting other
people, I had not picked up on the fact that my interlocutor was not enjoying a
‘good old intellectual joust’. Rather, he imagined that he was being
deliberately wound up by the provocative wittering of an intellectual gadfly
or, in his words, “a fucking pub troll”. In my experience, using the t-word is
often a sign that someone doesn’t wish to engage in, or has already lost, an
argument. Then he got right in my face with the ‘see you, Jimmy’ stare, which,
although an authentic part of the Glasgow experience, is not one I’d
necessarily recommend to visiting tourists. For all his ‘sensitive artist’ bona
fides, the guy had lost the plot and was ready to knock me into the middle of
next week. Only the intervention of a friend prevented an ugly scene which
might have ended up with a late-night visit to Accident and Emergency. What
with my pretty-boy looks and all, I can’t afford to take chances like
that.

As
songwriters do, I stored the incident away for future consideration. What did
it all mean? What had I done to provoke this sensitive fellow? Was it something
I said, or something about my manner? Might I have done more to diffuse the
situation? Did I really say something to offend him, or was he merely a jerk with
a drink in him who didn’t like to be crossed in an argument? The evidence of
the song reveals which option I went for.

The
tune was one I had been playing around with for ages, while struggling to come
up with a suitable lyric. Various drafts had withered on the vine as I grasped
for a topic that would sit with the feel of the piece. The music always comes
first, because I believe that there is no point in having good lyrics if the
tune doesn’t cut the mustard. There are many classic pop songs that have great
tunes and rubbish lyrics, but I can’t think of many acknowledged classics with rubbish
tunes and great lyrics. When
you live what, for shorthand purposes, I’ll describe as an ordinary settled
life, finding interesting subject matter can be tricky. Lyrics written to reflect
my day-to-day experiences might not necessarily interest the average listener. I
suspect the market would be somewhere south of sluggish for songs with titles
like ‘Do we need milk?’ or ‘Go and tidy your room, madam!’ Having said that,
however, perhaps some readers will identify with my heartfelt power ballad ‘Broken
photocopier blues’.

It’s
worth taking your time with the words, because the difference between dreary
lyrics (for example, pretty much anything by Oasis) and excellent lyrics (for example,
pretty much anything by Joni Mitchell) is roughly equivalent to the difference
between typing and writing. Once I’ve identified a theme and a title, the
hardest part is coming up with a couple of lines that I like, signature lines
that will encode the lyrical DNA of the song. Once those words are in place, I
can usually work around them and start to embellish things reasonably quickly. In
this case, I knew that I was going to write about the motivations of that mad
guy in the pub, so the key words formed the opening line of the song:

“You
don’t want to hear, you just want to bend somebody’s ear.”

Everything
else flowed from that point. Once I got inside the mind of the character, it
was relatively easy to lay out the possible and probable reasons for his
behaviour. By
the time the process was finished, I had accumulated enough material to make it
a matter of what to leave out, not what to force in.To
score an extra bonus song-writing point, I decided to present some of his anger
issues in list form during the middle eight. Lists in songs, when done well, always
impress me. Apart from anything else, it shows that the writer has given the words
a little bit of thought, instead of just looking for things that rhyme, although
REM’s impenetrable ‘It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)’
might just be an exception to that rule.

Perhaps
the most famous example of a list song is ‘My favourite things’ by Rodgers and
Hammerstein:

“Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things”

‘Let’s
call the whole thing off’ by George and Ira Gershwin is another refined example
of the genre, while Bob Dylan’s ‘A hard rain’s gonna fall’, written -according
to legend- during the Cuban missile crisis, is said to be a compilation of the first
lines of all the songs he didn’t think he’d ever get to write. A less
portentous list appears on ‘Hello’, the 1990 hit by The Beloved, which features
a roll call of various A, B and C-list celebrities. I salute any writer with
the chutzpah to include the line:

The
list in the middle eight of my song lays out some of the things that might grind
the gears of an angry man of a certain age:

"You’re
angry if they don’t, angry if they do, angry
when they don’t think the same as you. You're angry with your boss, angry with your car, angry
at the queue waiting at the bar.”

I’m
going to write some other time about walking in the footsteps of my musical
heroes, but it’s clear from the staccato delivery of the ‘angry’ list that this
track is influenced by David Bowie. This impression is emphasised by some
excellent ‘Scary Monsters’-style guitar provided by my chum Alan Robertson.
Alan has been contributing to the album through the miracle of digital file
transfer. The way it works is that I send him a copy of the track at a
relatively early stage of its development and he adds loads of stuff at his
home studio before emailing it back to me. He gives me lots of options, which
is how I like it. Again, I prefer the mixing process to be more about what to
leave out than what to put in; when it comes to selecting guitar or keyboard
parts, my indecision is usually final. Fraser Sneddon’s bass, as ever, provides
fluidity and heft, reminding me how lucky I am to know such talented musicians,
people with the ability to bring my basis ideas to life.

They say that revenge
is a dish best served cold, but this particular dish will probably never be served; it's highly unlikely that the bloke in the pub will ever hear my song.

Now
that I think about it, maybe I should have just punched him in the mouth.

About Me

A few years ago, I promised that I would never start a blog; this is it.
On this blog, I plan to respond to real (or imagined) slights by posting coruscating put-downs of my enemies, competitors and -occasionally- friends. I also plan to maintain the acrimonious simmering of a series of longstanding grudges and petty disputes.
But mainly, the blog will faithfully record a pointless and pedestrian series of idle musings, attempted libels and ill-considered theories about popular culture, sport, politics, music and the meaning of life.
For the last couple of years, I've been writing about an album I'm recording; yes, it's nearly finished.
The views represented on this blog are not necessarily endorsed by the author, unless they are.